Thursday, 2 January 2014

Russia's Deadly Black Widow Cult Threatens Sochi Olympics


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 THEY are young, female, and in love - and they are the doomed followers of a man known as Russia's Osama bin Laden.
They are the "black widows" of Russia's extremist terrorist group and are selected for death almost from the moment they join up.
Lured by the promise of a key role in a coming Russian holy war led by a charismatic madman with bin Laden-style aims, the women - some still in their teens - enjoy a brief, passionate relationships with Russian men who are also terror recruits.
Then, after he blows himself up in a suicide bombing, the new widow prepares herself for her own fiery end.
Willing to become martyrs for their beliefs and their lost loved ones, they enter train stations, buses and airports strapped with explosives destined to cause death and havoc.
The cult of the black widow is striking fear in the hearts of Russian parents who are losing daughters and sons to the terror group which is bent on a suicide bombing jihad.
Following two lethal bomb blasts in the southern Russian city of Volgograd this week, fears the terrorist cult will threaten the safety of Australians and other athletes competing in the Winter Olympics next month have escalated.
The leader of the group is Doku Umarov, a 49-year-old former oil construction engineer turned Islamic war lord and now dubbed the country's Osama bin Laden.
The US government has placed a $5 million bounty on the head of the Chechen-born self-proclaimed emir of a new Muslim state he calls the Caucasus Emirate.
Umarov has made a direct threat against the February 7-23 Sochi Games, saying it was his holy duty to prevent them from taking place.
Authorities believe Umarov is operating his terrorist movement out of the strife-torn southern republic of Dagestan, which lies between the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian Sea.
Umarov has denounced the establishment of Sochi's Olympic village as a defilement of the "sacred ground" once occupied by Circassians, who were "ethnically cleansed" by Russia in the 19th century.
Although young terrorist recruits to Umarov's movement have come from all over Russia, at least one black widow, Naida Asiyalova, who blew herself up in a suicide bombing in Volgograd in October, is from Dagestan.
As the death toll rises from the Volgograd bombings, Russian investigators have linked the explosions.
Russian Investigative Committee spokesman, Vladimir Markin confirmed Sunday's Volgograd train station was the work of a suicide bomber, whose "signature closely matches" the following day's bomb on a trolleybus.
Police first identified 26-year-old black widow Oksana Aslanova.
Russian news source Life News published a picture of what it reported was her bloodied head lying amid a pile of debris with her long brown hair spread across the train station floor.
Aslanova, who has been on Russia's wanted list for two years, has reportedly been married to two Islamic militant leaders liquidated by Russian forces in the North Caucasus.
After investigators found further remains - a male finger with a pin from a grenade - among the debris at the crime scene, a new culprit emerged.
As Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a further security crackdown, Sochi, which lies west of Dagestan on the Black sea coast, is being turned into a massive security fortress.
Umarov is said to excel in hostage-taking and suicide bombing, favouring buses, trains, rail stations and airports where he can kill and maim as many people as possible and cause maximum transport mayhem.
Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova was only 16 when she met and married Umalat Magomedov, a Dagestani Islamist rebel killed in 2009.
A classic, if very young example of the "black widow" cult which is a feature of the Russian Islamic terror campaign, Abdurakhmanova was part of a nationwide recruiting campaign by the Chechen rebel group.
Once lured in, the women are immediately treated as potential suicide bombers. They are not told this, rather they are treated the same way as male recruits and included in discussions about the right and wrong ways of Islamic faith.
Then the girl becomes a wife or mistress of the young war lord.
Abdurakhmanova's husband, Magomedov, aka Emir Al Bara, was the leader of the Shariat Jamaat organisation in Dagestan and an appointee of Doku Umarov.


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